Michigan judge blocks Kalshi from allowing residents to place sports bets

Michigan judge blocks Kalshi from allowing residents to place sports bets

A Michigan Judge has temporarily blocked Kalshi from offering sports betting contracts to residents, escalating the state-federal fight over prediction markets and gambling laws.

State of Michigan vs. Kalshi, court filing. Source: Law360

Sports betting activity has been rising on prediction markets since the beginning of the FIFA World Cup. Daily taker volume, which measures contracts bought or sold by traders filling existing orders, reached a record $713 million on June 20, according to Dune data. The milestone came more than a week after the World Cup started on June 11.

Daily prediction market taker volume. Source: Dune

Looking at monthly prediction market volume, sports betting was the leading category on the two largest prediction markets, rising 40% to $9.5 billion on Kalshi and 175% to $5.3 billion on Polymarket, Defirate data shows.

A June 11 Bernstein report predicted that the 2026 FIFA World Cup would generate more than $3 billion in incremental sports betting handle and between $5 billion and $10 billion in additional consumer prediction market volume.

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The World Cup winner contract alone has generated over $3.5 billion in trading volume on Polymarket, according to platform data.

World Cup Winner event contract. Source: Polymarket

The growing betting activity helped Polymarket emerge as an onboarding layer for new cryptocurrency users, as about 60% of World Cup bettors interacted with the blockchain for the first time during their prediction market entry, according to a Bitget Wallet study of 857,000 users, shared with Cointelegraph.

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